At least 70,000 employees in the UAE are already in funded workplace savings plans

At least 70,000 employees in the UAE are already enrolled in a funded savings plan. This includes employees enrolled with DEWS where participation is mandatory, but also many employees working for organisations outside the DIFC that have chosen to adopt structured savings plans for their workforce by choice.

And this is data from just one trustee, Equiom Group. The actual market is bigger.

Some employers have adopted these arrangements to fund and better manage end-of-service benefit liabilities.

For others, workplace savings forms part of a broader employee benefits and talent retention strategy.

But increasingly, employers are also seeing these savings plans as a way to give employees access to professionally managed investment funds where they can also voluntarily contribute and grow their savings over time.

These savings schemes may not all be structured exactly like the UAE EOSB Savings Scheme. However, the data does demonstrate that funded savings plans are gradually becoming a more popular mainstream employee benefit in the UAE compared to the traditional gratuity system.

Equiom has now surpassed USD 4bn in Assets under Administration across the Middle East workplace savings market. That figure alone says a great deal about how quickly funded savings schemes have grown in the region over the past few years.